Case Study

When 'Simple Booking' Isn't Simple

ChurchDesk Booking System

Designing a deceptively simple booking experience that masks extraordinary complexity—multiple stakeholders, rotating schedules, cemetery opening hours, and the emotional weight of funeral planning.

Funeral Booking Calendar - Project Overview — Funeral Calendar: Software development with and for the church

The Challenge

Funeral homes need to coordinate with churches to book a priest for funeral services. This coordination—between funeral home, parish office, and priest—requires extensive back-and-forth communication. For bereaved families, every additional phone call adds to an already draining experience.

The complexity runs deep: priests take turns on-call but have preferences or commitments to specific cemeteries. Teams of priests plan their availability 6 weeks into the future. Each cemetery has different opening hours. And beyond funerals, ChurchDesk wanted to cover more booking use cases like room rentals.

The coordination challenge — So that bereaved families can plan...

Stakeholder overview — Three stakeholder groups: Funeral homes need instant visibility and quick responses. Parish assistants need to give competent information and manage priest vacancies. Priests need more predictability and control over their schedules.

The Design Tension

We faced a fundamental UX paradox:

For Funeral Homes

Should feel like booking a priest—simple, fast, reliable. Select a time, get confirmation, done.

For Priests

Should NOT feel like being booked. Maintain autonomy and control over their own schedules. Service mentality, not service industry.

These opposing needs required careful system design to satisfy both perspectives simultaneously.

User flow diagram — The endless phone calls have come to an end

The Solution Architecture

ChurchDesk already had a calendar with people and resource association for events. We extended this foundation with a new concept:

Availability as Event Type — A new event type that could be associated with booking pages
Multi-Option Availability — Priests could make themselves available for multiple booking options (e.g., different cemeteries) in one action
Recurring Events Integration — Leveraged existing recurring events for simple on-call schedule creation
Cemetery Hours Overlay — Each cemetery's opening hours factored into availability calculation
Request-Based Booking — Bookings presented as requests/enquiries that priests confirm or reject

System architecture — Simple yet complex: Individual availability schedules, 6-week advance planning, multiple cemeteries with different funeral times

Availability model — Simple for priests: Set availability for multiple cemeteries at once, automatic funeral time handling, seamless calendar integration, email notifications, and manual confirmation control

Complexity Made Simple

The result: end-users (funeral homes) got a simple booking experience. Priests got simple availability management—especially powerful with recurring events. And everyone maintained appropriate control and visibility.

Interface design — Simple for parish assistants: Easy overview of on-call schedules, ability to set availability for priests

Technical Implementation

Built on React (web) with React Native components for mobile, extending ChurchDesk's existing platform:

Calendar System Extension — New availability event type integrated with existing calendar infrastructure
Booking Page Generator — Dynamic pages based on availability and cemetery constraints
Smart Filtering — Automatic matching of priest preferences to cemetery requirements
GDPR+ Compliance — Privacy-first design for sensitive personal and religious data

Booking interface — Simple for funeral homes: Only actually available times are shown, digital processing enables quick responses

Final solution — The entire process automated and in one place

Design Decisions

Request vs. Booking Language

To preserve priest autonomy, we framed all bookings as "requests" or "enquiries" that require confirmation. This small language shift maintained the service mentality while giving priests genuine control.

Unified Availability Model

Rather than building separate systems for funerals, room rentals, and other use cases, we designed a flexible availability model that scales to any booking scenario—a platform investment, not just a feature.

Progressive Disclosure

Funeral homes see only what they need: available times. The underlying complexity of rotating schedules, cemetery hours, and priest preferences stays invisible.

Impact

Coordination time dropped from days of phone calls to minutes. The system achieved high acceptance rates through smart filtering that only showed genuinely available options. Most importantly, it became a core platform feature—the availability/booking model now powers use cases far beyond the original funeral scheduling need.

See the feature live →